Education · Ireland
UCD Moore Centre for Business
- Client
- University College Dublin
- Main contractor
- Duggan Brothers
- Architect
- RKD
- Location
- Belfield, Dublin 4
- Completed
- 2019–2020
- Sector
- Education
- Scope
- Destination schedule and sign location drawings · Bilingual sign family, Irish first · Irish naming for donor and sponsor-named spaces · Door panels, pictogram panels and projecting signs · Lift-lobby directories and 1.7 metre stairwell numerals · Bilingual wall graphics, glass manifestations and quote walls
Irish sits above English on every panel, including the rooms that carry donors' and sponsors' names. The stairwells are marked by vinyl numerals 1.7 metres high, so the level reads before anything else does.
Investment
Storeys
Lecture theatre
Stairwell numerals
The UCD Moore Centre for Business opened in September 2019 and doubled the size of the UCD Lochlann Quinn School of Business. It is a three-storey extension built by Duggan Brothers to an RKD design, a €20 million investment named for the alumnus and businessman Dr George G. Moore, and opened by its founding donor Angela Moore. Inside it are a 320-seat lecture theatre, studios, co-working zones and a set of learning spaces that did not exist under those names anywhere else.
The building had to be named twice
UCD is a public body, so under the Official Languages Act 2003 the Irish on a sign comes first and sits at equal size and prominence with the English. On most projects that is a translation exercise. Here it was not, because the rooms were new. A Think Lab, an Active Learning room, a Business eLearning Creator Suite: these are coined terms, and a coined term has no Irish waiting to be looked up.
Harder still, several of the rooms carry people's names and company names. The Moore Atrium became Aitriam Uí Mhórdha. The Angela Moore Boardroom became Seomra Boird Aingil Uí Mhórdha. The George Moore Digital Collaboration Lab became Saotharlann Seoirse Uí Mhórdha um Chomhoibriú Digiteach, and the PwC Lecture Theatre became Léachtlann PwC. Irish declines proper names rather than leaving them alone, so each one had to be resolved on its own terms, then checked against the way the university and the donors would see it set in metal on a wall.
The work was not signing the rooms. It was giving the building a second vocabulary it did not yet have.
Read at three distances
The system resolves into three ranges. At the lift lobby, a directory panel lists every floor with its room numbers and both names, and pictograms for lifts, stairs and toilets sit on separate panels beside it. In the stairwells, the level is a single vinyl numeral 1.7 metres high in green, blue, red or black, so you know where you have arrived before you have read anything. At the door, a 229 by 304 millimetre panel carries the room number, the Irish name, the English name and the relevant pictograms.
The same rule carries into the graphics. The glass walls of the studios are cut with bilingual pairs (Deis Machnaimh and Room to Think, Spás chun ligint le do shamhlaíocht and Space to create), and the quote walls run Irish and English in the same colours and the same weight. Irish is not confined to the compliance signage. It is in the parts of the building that were there to be enjoyed.
